Marion Hartley PHS LIbrarian ... Thx brother Jim K! 3/17/14 Column in The Scioto Voice

High Notes 03-20-2014 – The Hartleys

Marion Hartley, I am proud to say, was a good friend of mine.  Ms. Hartley was the neighbor of my family, during the 1950’s, and she and her family, Melissa, Paula, and Clement, lived at 1834 Vinton Avenue, and their back-yard was just across the alley from the Kegley back-yard.  We lived around the corner at 1227 McConnell.  Ms. Hartley had been widowed, and worked as the librarian at Portsmouth High School.  I can say that Ms. Hartley was my good friend, because I used to spend many hours as a teenager at her house, as Melissa and I were the same age.  Paula was two years younger, and Ms. Hartley welcomed me into her family for the various and many, dramatic entertainments she organized for her kids, and neighbors.  As a dutiful, single mother she planned her life around her children and her profession.  We had many taffy pulls, and Halloween parties at the Hartley house.
Clement Austin, I presume was named for his father, Clement B. Hartley, (C. A.) was four years my junior, but C. A. was always around the Zeisler back yard basketball court, and our pass and touch football games under the street light at the corner of Vinton and McConnell.
When I got into high school, Ms. Hartley chose me as one of the staff members of the library along with her daughter, Melissa, a sweet and bright person.
Melissa graduated college and became a social worker.  C. A. became a star basketball and baseball player for the PHS Trojans, and was a standout forward for the 1961 State of Ohio championship Trojans that year.  C. A. went on to become a standout college player for The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.  C. A. was on the same Citadel team as Pat Conroy.  Conroy became the best-selling author of The Great Santini, Beach Music, The Prince of Tides, My Losing Season and South of Broad.  C. A. was mentioned in Conroy’s book, My Losing Season.
As for Paula Hartley…I don’t know what she’s done, nor where she is located.
Melissa became Mrs. Robert Young, and worked for the Scioto County Welfare Department.  Marion left Portsmouth High School and became the director of the Scioto County Children’s Home at Wheelersburg, before its closing.  My former wife and I were visited by Marion once after she had moved to Hollywood, California, and was proudly using her “Flair for the dramatic” as a bit player in various stage productions and tv commercials.
C. A. Hartley is deceased, and Dale Bahner, on whose ground Clem raised a garden each year while teaching at East High School in Sciotoville, told me he’d heard that “C. A. died while working in his own yard while living in New Richmond, Ohio several years ago.”
Ms. Hartley was one of several employees at PHS who treated me special, but I know that all teachers develop special affinity for some of their students.  I was lucky, I had Lea Duschinski, Estelle Carter, Paul Spears, Freda Burke, George Heller and Marion Hartley, in the school system while I was (catch this word) “MATRICULATING”.  Ms. Hartley would be proud!
The reason for my memories of the Hartley family being piqued is that I was reading Pat Conroy’s 2009 book, South of Broad, which is a novel about family relationships in one of the most beautiful, but most southern, of southern cities.  Portsmouth is far from being as beautiful as Charleston, S.C., but our neighbors, friends and family are just as special to us.